Posts Tagged Winston Yung

HTC has reiterated its commitment to Beats By Dre, denying reports that the recent replacement of its Chief Financial Officer is a prelude to reducing involvement with the audio brand. Speculation about the role Beats Audio would continue to play was spurred this week when CFO Winston Yung was replaced by Chia-Lin Chang, Yung being shifted to a “corporate development role.”

At the time, some reports indicated that Yung had been a significant player in the Beats Audio investment by HTC, and pointed to the executive switch-up as a sign that the company might be having a change of heart. Not so, says HTC CEO Peter Chou in the following statement given to Android Community:

On Monday, HTC announced the appointment of Chia-Lin Chang as Chief Financial Officer with Winston Yung, his predecessor, transitioning to a corporate development role.

“Media speculation that ties this announcement to HTC’s partnership and investment in Beats By Dre is categorically inaccurate,” said Peter Chou, CEO of HTC Corporation. “HTC and Beats have made impressive progress in innovation and brand awareness and the integration of the Beats brand and technology in the new HTC One series is a clear indication of our commitment to this partnership.”

Nonetheless, there remain questions around how much Beats hardware HTC will bundle in future devices. Earlier this month saw suggestions that Beats Headphones would no longer be bundled as a matter of course with HTC devices.

HTC’s CFO Winston Yung has been shunted into a ‘corporate development’ role after barely a year on the job. He orchestrated some pretty controversial deals during his tenure, including the $300 million purchase of the Beats Audio brand from Dr. Dre — an acquisition that has so far shown little value except as a marketing device. Yung also occupied the hot seat while HTC’s balance sheet suddenly flipped from brilliant to bad and then worse, and was outspoken in his views of what went wrong. HTC has provided no reason for the job shift, leaving analysts to guess at how the company’s strategy will change to capitalize on its new One smartphones and battle against Sammy’s imminent contender. The new CFO is Chia-Lin Chang, a former Goldman Sachs partner and Motorola engineer who hopefully knows how to handle pressure.

HTC’s shares plummeted today after a change in the Taiwanese company’s CFO. Today, HTC announced that Chia-Lin Chang, a former Motorola engineer and partner at Goldman Sachs in Taiwan, will be taking over for Winston Yung as the company’s new chief financial officer. After this news, shares for the company dropped at much as 6 percent. It probably didn’t help much that Android rival, Samsung, had also announced the unveiling date for the Samsung Galaxy S III.

HTC hasn’t been doing so well, ever since Samsung’s wildly popular Galaxy S II claimed “king of the Android mountain,” dominating the market share towards the last half of 2011. HTC is the 5th largest smartphone maker in the world and recently reported a 70% loss in net profits during Q1 of this year ($152 million). VP of Masterlink Investment Advisory in Taipei mentioned that, “When a company changes its CFO, it often indicates that the company’s operations or financials have reached a bottleneck.”

Although sales for HTC’s One line haven’t been too great in Europe, according to analysts, let’s hope HTC can pick up steam once their One line reaches the US in the coming weeks. Something tells me it wont be easy with Android fanboys clamoring for Samsung’s latest flagship.

While the message out of HTC following yesterday's Q4 financial results focused on “short-term difficulties” and “product transitioning”, the company offered more detailed information on future strategy in its conference call. Looking back on a disappointing quarter, HTC CFO Winston Yung conceded that the company had “dropped the ball on products,” singling out its LTE devices, particularly in the US, for criticism. Yung noted that HTC’s LTE products had a “thicker form factor” than competitors, and that battery life had become an issue, too, concluding, “we simply need to do a better job on both the design, and also the internals and the components of products.”

To that end, the company is setting up a high-level “studio”, overseen by CEO Peter Chou, to work on on future device strategy. Yung said that this team, consisting of people from HTC’s design and engineering teams, would be focusing on “key products that we are going to launch this year.”

The CFO also suggested that HTC may be looking to diversify the range of chips used in future products. In recent years, HTC products have been powered exclusively by Qualcomm CPUs, however Yung said that HTC has “a very good range of suppliers to choose from on CPU, for example”, adding “I don’t think we are constrained in any way from a component point of view.”

HTC is expected to unveil the first products in its 2012 line-up at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona later this month. So far we’ve seen early leaks of the mid-range “HTC Ville”, as well as unconfirmed details of the high-end “HTC Edge.”

After a long streak of skyrocketing earnings, HTC’s climb towards the stars seems to have stalled. Q4 was not kind to the company and CFO Winston Yung thinks he knows the reason why. During the today’s earnings call Yung admitted that HTC “dropped the ball” with its selection of LTE devices. He conceded that the bulky handsets simply failed on a design and spec level — especially when it came to battery life — and were not selling nearly as well as expected. Unsurprisingly, the company promises to turn its fortunes around with the next product cycle, which is rumored to kick off at MWC with the Ville.

After reporting a downturn in revenues, HTC’s top brass is conceding that some of their woes can be attributed to a disappointing crop of bulky, power-hungry LTE handsets. CFO Winston Yung wasn’t mincing words during the company’s quarterly earnings call, saying that HTC “dropped the ball” with last year’s lineup of high-end smartphones. Yung pointed to a lack of breakout specs and poor battery life as the main reason for less-than-stellar sales. Yung and HTC understand that this year’s models can’t suffer from the same overall poor design and are looking to correct course with the launch of several new models at Mobile World Congress, including the rumored quad-core HTC Edge. The Taiwanese manufacturer has been emphasizing quality over quantity in 2012, and with less on their slate they can devote more time to crafting great smartphones and great experiences with a more nuanced touch.

Despite positive profits and some monster growth, especially in the US market, HTC is in hot water with their shareholders. The Taiwanese smartphone maker had to reduce its fourth quarter outlook from flat growth to negative last week, after a prospective patent purchase fell through when the company lost its suit against Apple. A beat-down from German courts over yet another patent case didn’t help. CFO Winston Yung placated investors in an interview with Reuters, hyping up a focus on high-end products in the upcoming year.

Though Yung was careful not to give specifics on anything (much to the dismay of eager Android bloggers like your truly), he was bullish on HTC’s upcoming portfolio. “We will focus on the product next year, better and more competitive. Other than new LTE phones for the U.S. market, we also have phones for the global market. We will launch some worldwide flagship products. We’re confident in them.” HTC is probably looking to regain the lead at the top of the high-end hardware pile, as Samsung and Motorola continue to equal and in some cases exceed their handsets.

We already know what at least two of those flagship products are likely to be: the HTC Edge, a Tegra 3 quad-core monster with a 4.7-inch 720p screen, and the HTC Ville, an 8.4-mm slate with a Super AMOLED display. Both phones are rumored for a release early next year with Ice Cream Sandwich, and will probably be shown off at either CES in January or Mobile World Congress in February. What say you, readers – is HTC at the beginning of a long downward slide a la Nokia, or just suffering a temporary setback?

HTC has recently seen a 7% dip in share prices thanks to an earnings adjustment to their 4th quarter and to the competitive mobile phone landscape. To counter this and to make sure investors are not too worried, HTC’s CFO Winston Yung has spoken to Reuters about their plans for 2012. HTC wants to get [...]